Cage Match Project Podcast Cage Match Project

In this episode, artist and curator Michael Anthony García explains his concept of the cage as a ghost of an 18-wheeler and his use of material to create a visual story. Blanton Museum Associative Curator Claudia Zapata highlights the rise of the cage as a tool used to hold immigrants in detention centers inhumanely and the rising deaths of immigrant workers. This is a great conversation between two individuals who have such a supportive relationship. They discuss difficult topics and the possibilities of how storytelling can dive deeper into everyday injustices.



Michael Anthony García's 2017 Suspension of Belief explores themes of displacement, immigration, and migration. 



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About

Michael Anthony García

https://www.mrmichaelme.com/

Multidisciplinary artist & independent curator Michael Anthony García, claiming both Mexican and US citizenship, is based in Austin, Texas, and predominantly focuses his practice on photography/ video, sculpture/ installation & performance. He is a founding member of the Los Outsiders curatorial collective & has curated large-scale exhibitions of international artists in & out of the US.  Notably, he has had solo curatorial projects for the Mexic-arte Museum, Texas State University Galleries, the Austin Central Public Library gallery, and the Fusebox Festival. He participated in the 2011 Texas Biennial and has won awards for both his curatorial & 3D work. He co-hosts an intersectional conversation podcast named El Puente and is the publisher of POCa Madre Magazine. García has premiered work for The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Experimental Action Performance Art Biennale in Houston, The Contemporary Austin, SoundSpace at The Blanton Museum of Art, El Museo de la Ciudad de México, and ThreeWalls in Chicago.



Claudia Zapata earned their Ph.D. in art history at Southern Methodist University’s RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture program. Their dissertation is titled “Chicano Art is Not Dead: The Politics of Curating Chicano Art in Major U.S. Exhibitions, 2008-2012.” They received their BA and MA in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Maya art from the Classic period (250-900 CE). Their research interests include curatorial methodologies of identity-based exhibitions, Chicanx and Latinx art, digital humanities, BIPOC zines, and designer toys. Zapata was the curator of exhibitions and programs at the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin. They curated several Texas exhibitions, including A Viva Voz: Carmen Lomas Garza (2009), Sam Coronado: A Retrospective (2011), and Fantastic & Grotesque: José Clemente Orozco in Print (2014). From 2018-2022, Claudia was the curatorial assistant of Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, working on the award-winning exhibition, ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965-Now.

They have published articles in Panhandle-Plains Historical Review, JOLLAS: Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, El Mundo Zurdo: Selected Works from the Meetings of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa, Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas, and Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. Their essay "Chicanx Art in the Digital Age” is featured in the ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics,1965-Now exhibition catalog, published by Princeton University Press in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Their essay, “The Future is Feminist: How the Maestras Atelier Transformed Self Help Graphics,” is part of the anthology Self Help Graphics & Art at Fifty published by the University of California Press. In 2024, their forthcoming essays include “Post-Internet Latinx Art: Networked Interventions in the Digital Diaspora” in the academic journal Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture and the co-authored essay with Asiel

The curator of the Cage Match project and host for this podcast, Aryel René Jackson, interviews Maggie Jensen for the first episode of season 2. In each of her installations, Maggie Jensen becomes involved in different systems or aesthetics of authority, whether the art institution, a natural history archive, or extractive resource infrastructures. In this episode, Jensen discusses the process as she describes the material and history of the "model", "index", and found object in "Round 20: "Attitudes of Humility". Jensen talks about making requests of a cultural archive to access data about Nancy Holt's 1976 "Sun Tunnels" and how the process informs how we might think about displaying objects. Jensen's practice asks us to consider what paths and limits are revealed about the internal logic institutions related to the Land Art genre, water main casings, and drainage pipes. https://www.maggiejensen.com/



Installation materials consist of unaltered HDPE industrial culvert pipe; platforms of cement board and wood; cast concrete of water main casings broken by extreme heat-related pressure; a curved wall mapped with a reproduced constellation used by artist Nancy Holt in the 1976 landwork "Sun Tunnels".



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The curator of the Cage Match Project and host for this podcast, Ariel René Jackson, interviews Rachel Means for the last episode of the season. Rachel Means is an Austin-based multidisciplinary installation artist. Means will be installing her project in the cage in the next upcoming months. We talk about Means' practice and how she incorporates line, natural fibers, and found materials to explore ritual, Christian faith, and nature. Her work explores form and ways of becoming. She earned her Masters in Fine Arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before arriving in Austin, Texas. Episode Art: "Remembered Humility" 2019 by Rachel Means. https://www.rachelsreflections2014.com


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The curator of the Cage Match Project and host for this podcast, Ariel René Jackson, interviews André Fuqua, an interdisciplinary artist based in Austin, Texas. Fuqua's training in civil engineering and architecture guides much of his practice and his work explores ideas surrounding space, visibility, otherness, and power. He has strong interests in material ethos, the built environment, and hidden narratives. We talk about how Fuqua's background of engineering and southern familial heritage influence and direct the materials and subjects of his artistic practice. Fuqua discusses the ethos of materials as he explains his developing term "material symbolism" and how cultural and societal symbols develop out of our surroundings and cultural heritage. Episode Art: "A He" 2015 by André Fuqua https://www.andreishere.us 


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The curator of the Cage Match project and host for this podcast, Ariel René Jackson, interviews Stephanie Concepcion Ramirez, a second-generation Salvadoran-American born and raised in Prince George's County, MD and now based in Pearland, TX. Ramirez's photographs and installations utilize familial and historical archives as well as found objects such as emergency blankets to confront existing narratives of Central American migrants. We talk about her use of emergency blankets and archival imagery in her 2019 installation "vibraciones de temblores" (vibrations of tremors). We consider what political artwork could look like when there is room for vulnerability in processing traumatic histories. Episode Art : "por amor" 2019 by Stephanie Concepcion Ramirez https://stephaniecramirez.com/Project-Index


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The curator of the Cage Match Project and host for this podcast, Ariel René Jackson, interviews Aimeé Everett, a New Orleans native currently based in Austin, Texas. Everett creates visual diaries through abstract paintings, utilizing her thoughts, inspirations, and experiences as inspiration for generating line and color. Her work explores portraying silence oftentimes using a circular surface of wood or canvas. We discuss Black interiority and the ways that Black abstract artists use the genre to address inward exploration. Episode Art : "A Visualized Trauma" 2018 by Aimeé Everett https://www.aimeemeverett.com



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